Explosions echoed across northern Tehran on Tuesday, minutes after U.S. President Donald Trump declared that Israeli warplanes were heading home under a fresh cease-fire brokered by Washington. Eyewitnesses in the Iranian capital said two sharp blasts shook the city; Israeli army radio later attributed the noise to a strike on an Iranian radar installation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office insisted that no further sorties had been flown since the premier’s phone call with Trump, yet Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier said he had instructed the air force to hit “new targets in Tehran” in response to what he called Iranian missile launches in breach of the truce. Tehran denied firing any missiles and accused Israel of continuing its raids for 90 minutes beyond the agreed halt.
Trump, bound for a NATO summit in The Hague, used an expletive-laden post on Truth Social to chide America’s closest Middle-East ally: “Israel. Do not drop those bombs … Bring your pilots home, now!” He later wrote that “all planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘plane wave’ to Iran,” claiming the cease-fire remained intact. Reporters at the White House quoted the president as saying he was “really unhappy” with Israel for “unloading” so soon after accepting the deal.
The uneasy truce—announced barely twelve days after Israel’s surprise 13 June strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and two days after U.S. jets joined the campaign—appeared to offer the first diplomatic off-ramp in a conflict that has already killed hundreds in Iran and at least 28 in Israel. Many civilians voiced cautious relief: “We’re just glad the bombs have stopped, even if it’s late for us,” said Tel Aviv resident Arik Daimant, whose home was destroyed on Sunday.
Israel has repeatedly threatened to topple Iran’s clerical leadership if it deems it necessary to neutralise Tehran’s nuclear programme, which Iran insists is entirely peaceful. Full casualty figures remain impossible to verify independently: Iranian media are tightly controlled, and much of northern Israel is still under evacuation orders after waves of retaliatory missile fire.
With both governments trading accusations of bad faith only hours into the cease-fire, diplomats warned that any further mis-step could unravel Washington’s fragile deal. As night fell, air-raid sirens remained silent in both capitals, but few residents were confident peace would hold beyond dawn.